UPDATE: Tuesday's originally scheduled meeting between Shea's and the Buffalo Common Council has been postponed. According to a spokesperson with the Common Council, the meeting has been tentatively re-scheduled for Tuesday, April 4.
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Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - Management issues at Shea's Buffalo Theatre have changed the complexity of how the longtime theatre has been run over the last several months.
Cracks began forming in late August when a change of roles for leadership at Shea's took place following a number of complaints by employees of a toxic workplace environment. That change saw Michael Murphy being re-assigned from President and the theatre conducting a hybrid leadership plan.
A couple of months later, Murphy was axed from Shea's after six years as President of the theatre, and then filed a lawsuit against Shea’s one week later.
To make matters worse for Shea's, M&T Bank decided to cut ties with theatre, as one a spokesman for the bank confirmed the prior management issues had something to do with ending the partnership.
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With M&T severing its partnership with Shea's, that raised some red flags for some local elected leaders in the City of Buffalo.
"M&T Bank is a Buffalo bank. It is a premier lender to this community and a champion of this community. So when we saw that, it really raised our alarm bells to say, 'What are we doing here?'," said Buffalo Common Councilman Mitch Nowakowski. "'We need to bring folks in here that are happening with the management transition team to kind of clear up any ambiguity, and to see what we can expect from Shea's moving forward.'"
It was more than a month ago when Nowakowski and Council President Darius Pridgen sponsored a resolution, calling on the management team at Shea's Buffalo to join the Council at their Community Development Committee session and provide an update on where things stand with the theatre.
While Council President Pridgen acknowledges the Council usually doesn't get involved in a theatre business, Shea's is a city-owned building, and has also been a large economic engine in Downtown Buffalo, especially for other establishments that rely on the world performances that happen there.
"There are other theaters that have gone under, even, and I don't believe that that's the case with Shea's. But I think that people need to know that the pull out of M&T, the recent things we've read in the news about their management situation, people want to know that Shea's is a sound. That has not been made public that Shea's is sound," said Pridgen. "What we've heard is about the controversies. I haven't heard anybody give an explanation, and at the end of the day, this Council gives capital dollars for the improvements of that building. If something were to happen to that organization, that building belongs to the City of Buffalo."
The original meeting with Shea's management and the Common Council was set to take place on Tuesday, Feb. 28, but the management team at Shea's needed some extra time to try to clear the air on any further potential issues at hand with the theatre. After another change of plans with a scheduled meeting for March 14, all parties will finally be ready to address the matter on Tuesday.
"I look forward to them not only clearing up any ambiguity, but really showing the management plan that they have moving forward," Nowakowski said. "That there was a little turbulence a few months back, but that we can all remain very focused and confident in what they'll be doing moving forward."
While the issues at hand with Shea's may not be a front-burner issue, compared to other matters on tap for the Common Council, Pridgen does want answers in terms of the status of the city's building being in good shape, being well-maintained, and if they have the funds in order to continue being an asset to Downtown Buffalo.
"It is really about bringing, again, information to the table, letting constituents know what is going on with a city asset, and with, what I think, is an institution that is very important to the City of Buffalo," Pridgen said. "The arts are very important, but I am not going to be inquiring when Shea's comes, at least personally, about their management troubles. That's not my issue. My issue is our city asset that they are in charge of, at this point."
"We want to see concrete plans of how to move forward. In order to do that, we need to know where we were, because clearly, there were a lot of allegations of a toxic work environment, and that's just not acceptable anywhere," Nowakowski added. "We want to see that not only was the problem rectified, people being made whole, and the plan of moving forward, and how a management plan will be successful in addressing a lot of those needs. That clearly came out of people leaving Shea's."
While neither Nowakowski and Pridgen are expecting the meeting with Shea's to go poorly, they do have some concerns with the future of the theatre if there is no concrete plan of action, or no resolution in the near future for the management issues at hand.
"If that were the case, then the city has to look at what legally we would have to do to move forward with a new tenant, to be very honest, with a new board," Pridgen said. "I think the board members that are on Shea's right now are very responsible people, very smart people who are going to figure this out. I think, personally, that they are going to move forward, and we won't have to worry about a season canceling. There is another theatre group, that I won't name right now, that just canceled their season. They are not in a city building, so I have not gotten involved with it, but at the end of the day, they had management issues to an extent that they had to cancel the rest of the season. I don't want to see that. I don't want to see it happen with that organization or any organization, because the arts are too important for the City of Buffalo."
As for Nowakowski, he says as Shea's landlord, it is the Common Council's responsibility and duty to figure this out with the board before anything gets much worse.
"I want folks to realize that, yes, Shea's has their own management entity that they're doing all this, but as their landlord, we have to have oversight and responsibility to make sure that they're being good stewards to the building, and understand in which they know the importance it is to the regional economy of Western New York and in Downtown Buffalo," Nowakowski said.
"Shea's has performances that bring people from all over the world to come and see, and they mean a lot to us. So we hope that we can resolve this and have accurate information to show that if they are clearing up and resolving it, how we move forward, and to show people in the region that they should have faith to go to Shea's."
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